But as they descended a midday wind picked up. Clouds rolled in and a snowstorm enveloped them.

Already one man from another team was close to death on the portion of the mountain known as Polish Glacier. A second man was lost, down-climbing somewhere on the mountain's north face. And a third, Greg Nourse, had survived a night on Polish Glacier and now was trying to get down as well.

Aconcagua was about to show the world how dangerous her thin air can be.

Nourse was the first to get down to Camp 2, about 4 p.m.

“My friend Dave is still up on the glacier,” he told guides there. “And my brother came down last night.”

When told that his brother never arrived, Nourse replied: “Don't worry about my brother. He'll get off the mountain. He's crazy strong and determined. Get Dave.”

What Nourse had just accomplished also was crazy strong and determined. He'd spent the night at 22,000 feet trying to save his friend while his brother, Eric Nourse, sought help. When no one came by dawn, Greg Nourse summited and descended to Camp 2 for help.

Exhausted, he lay down to rest.

Soon the three Orange County friends pulled into Camp 2.

Alex Barber, 24, of Orange, David van der Roest, 26, of Santa Ana, and Carter Cox, 26, of Irvine, were ready to celebrate. But they heard coughing in the next tent.

The coughing man was Greg Nourse, who explained that his friend Dave Reinhart was still stuck on the Polish glacier with severe altitude sickness. And his brother Eric Nourse was still missing.

Outside, guides were calling park rangers about rescue options so Barber stepped out to join them.

It was there he saw a ghostlike figure stumble into camp. The man had been up 36 hours with little food or water. And he'd just climbed down the north face of the largest mountain in the Western Hemisphere – without a trail.

It was Eric Nourse.

How Eric Nourse made it to Camp 2 no one will ever know.

He was too exhausted to say much. Already the depleted oxygen level of his blood was killing him. As was the fluid buildup in his lungs, known as high altitude pulmonary edema, or HAPE. All he could do was lie down and sleep.

He asked Greg Nourse to leave the tent. A few minutes after that, Greg Nourse recalls, someone came out and broke the news about his brother.

“He's gone.”

And Aconcagua wasn't done.

Eric Nourse had found his way down before he died, somehow navigating a mountain alone and at night in an effort to save a fellow climber.

But the man Eric tried to save, David Reinhart, died alone high on the Polish Glacier.

It took a week before rangers could retrieve Reinhart's body.

A few days later, David van der Roest's mom greeted her son at Los Angeles International Airport.

“When he came through the door, I pounded my chest and did a Tarzan call,” says Susan van der Roest, demonstrating. “I wanted to dog-pile them, but I knew I couldn't.”

Aconcagua had changed so many lives on Dec. 29.

“I see how fragile life is,” David van der Roest says; “and how valuable.”

He won't tackle any more 20,000-foot mountains – the altitude affected him too much. But he plans to keep mountain climbing.

They all do.

Greg Nourse is grateful for the efforts of Alex Barber and others to save his brother's life.

“They did what they could,” Greg Nourse says. “They just didn't have the equipment.”

In January, more than 2,000 people attended the memorial service of Eric Nourse and Dave Reinhart in Portland, Ore.

“Both of them loved life and loved new experiences,” says Greg Nourse. “We never were trying to prove anything. We just loved doing new things, climbing new mountains. Our goal wasn't the destination, it was the journey.”

He too plans to keep climbing, with their memory in his heart.

For six years, Alex Barber and his friends had pursued Aconcagua's summit. Now?

“When I think of this trip,” he says, “I don't think about the summit.”

He thinks about the man he could not save.

Barber will carry that memory on his next trip, slated for later this year, up the 26,289-foot Shishapangma in the Himalayas.

It's not always about the summit, he says.

“At the top, you're only halfway off the mountain. You still have to get down.”

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